USA: California upholstered furniture flammability

California is currently the only state that has mandatory flammability regulations for upholstered furniture for residential use. The standard which has been used to fulfil this requirement, TB 117, is more than 40 years old and needed to be updated to reflect modern manufacturing methods that can reduce the use of harmful chemicals.

The new standard includes test methods that are designed for the assessment of the resistance of upholstered furniture component assemblies to combustion after exposure to smouldering cigarettes under specified conditions. Unlike TB 117 which only covers resilient filling materials, TB 117-2013 covers the following four upholstered furniture components: cover fabrics, barrier materials, resilient filling materials and decking materials. Separate test methods are provided for each of the materials, and they refer to different sections of ASTM E1353-08aε1 for the test specimen preparation and/or test procedure.

The previous standard includes an open-flame test for filling materials, such as foam, which were treated with flame retardants. However, the new standard eliminates this as the most common ignition sources of fires are smouldering sources such as cigarettes, space heaters and extension cords. Under the new standard, manufacturers can meet the requirements by using smoulder-resistant cover fabrics or smoulder-resistant barriers beneath the cover fabrics, thus removing the need to use harmful flame retardant chemicals in the filling materials.